ABSTRACT
Classical financial theory ignores the existence of financial intermediaries. In neoclassical micro-economics, the capital market brings together agents with financing capacity—investors—and agents with financing needs—companies. Thanks to the private information they possess, the latter on the productive potential of the company, the former on the marginal productivity of their investment, the trade can take place. I propose, first of all, to review the discourse that legitimizes financial intermediaries through economic theory. This naturalized vision of finance could not be further removed from reality: the financial security only exists because of the presence of systems and organizations that give it its attributes (liquidity, status), take care of its distribution (via market institutions, distributors, advisors), and ensure its price history can be traced. The angle adopted is a resolutely micro-economic one, starting with the initial theory of financial intermediation put forward by Gurley and Shaw (1956). In a second part, I will present some socio-politically inspired approaches that highlight the appearance of financial intermediaries through the possibility of legitimizing the capture of economic rents. This aspect, which appears in many recent works focusing on the financialization of the economy, emphasizes the link between financial institutions and certain forms of political domination. Finally, the third part will present some of my own work in the field of social studies of finance which are based on observational field research and which explore the socio-economic nature of financial intermediation.
